“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia,” US president Donald Trump said on February 13. “And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”

Trump deserves our thanks and support in taking aim at US military spending in general, and at the insanely large, outrageously expensive, and mostly useless US nuclear arsenal in particular.

Making sure he feels lots of public love on the matter is a matter of major importance, because the only thing more rare than such talk from an American president since World War 2 has been real action on the idea.

Dwight Eisenhower made a strong rhetorical lunge against the “military-industrial complex,” but only on his way out of office in his 1960 farewell address.

Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, seemed somewhat inclined to agree with Eisenhower on the subject, and likely paid the price for that agreement in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Since that time, American presidents have considered themselves on notice to tread lightly where the US war machine is concerned.

So, does he really mean it?

I suspect he does.

Even a man with Trump’s tendencies toward saying whatever pops into his head knows that this kind of talk is politically, maybe even personally, dangerous. There’s no upside to saying it if he doesn’t mean it.

And if he’s really interested, as he claims, in reducing the federal government’s drunken-sailor spending, some of the reduction will have to come out of the Pentagon’s hide.

“Defense” (a euphemism for military spending, most of which has little or nothing to do with actually defending the US) is the single biggest category of “discretionary” government spending.

What that means is that every dime of “defense” spending has to be appropriated by Congress and those appropriations have to be signed into law by the president (or, if he refuses, Congress has to override his veto).

The other biggest budget categories — “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare, as well as service on the government’s debt — are “non-discretionary.” That money gets spent unless Congress and the president actively agree to NOT spend it … a difficult deal to reach.

In other words, if you are not serious about cutting “defense” spending, you’re not serious about cutting spending, period.

Fortunately, the US could probably cut “defense” spending by 90% without sacrifice or danger where actual “national defense” is concerned.

Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex has been the single biggest beneficiary of government largesse at your expense for more than 80 years now. The beneficiaries of “defense” spending will not go gently into that good night.

How strong is the “defense” lobby? Strong enough that congressional debate is always about how much to increase, never about whether to decrease, the size of its welfare checks.

If Trump’s serious about this, he’ll need your support to make it happen. Let “your representatives” in Congress know that their political futures depend on this.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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